Kinematics, simulation and analysis of the planar and symmetric postures of a serial-parallel climbing robot Abstract: This chapter presents the kinematic analysis of a novel 10-degrees-of-freedom serial-parallel redundant robot. The robot is designed for climbing and exploring 3D truss structures to execute maintenance and inspection tasks. First, the forward kinematic problem of the robot is solved. Then, since the general inverse kinematic problem is complex due to the kinematic redundancy, a simplified problem which assumes planar and symmetric postures is solved. Using a developed simulator, it is shown that these planar and symmetric postures are sufficient to execute many typical movements necessary to explore 3D structures, such as transitions between different beams or between different faces of a beam. Finally, the workspace of the robot when it adopts the planar and symmetric postures is analyzed for different designs, demonstrating the flexibility of these postures. |